What Have You Fettled Today?

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Rickshaw Phil

Overconfidentii Vulgaris
Moderator
Made and fitted a new mudflap for the Dawes Galaxy. The old one had curled up after riding through a diesel spillage recently. It still did the job fine, but the look of it annoyed me.:shy:
 

Gunk

Guru
Location
Oxford
Stripped, polished and rebuilt a set of Weinmann 999 centre pull brakes.

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ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I do have bike fettling to do, but for the second time in a week my microwave oven cut out so I thought I'd fettle that first...

It is a big, powerful 3-way oven (microwave/fan/heating element). It has been overheating but comes back to life once it has cooled down.

The first thing I noticed was that the corner of the kitchen that I put it in is rather too confined a space - a shelf below, cupboards above, chimney breast to the right, wall to the left and another wall too close behind. I decided that I would place it to the front of the shelf after fettling, rather than to the rear of it.

Once I had brought the oven out of its cubby hole, I saw that its cooling fan grille was 75% blocked with thick dust. That definitely wouldn't help so I cleaned that. I took a look inside the oven and couldn't see anything else obviously wrong with it. I put it back together and will have to see if the increased space round it and clean grille have fixed the overheating problem.

Wheel bearing fettling to come...
 

DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
Progress of sorts on the PlanetX hillclimb build:

- Dura-Ace shifters fitted, Clarks Zero-G lightweight brake cable inners/outers fitted to the Ultralight Titanium brakes.
- Aerozine lightweight seatpost clamp in place of the PlanetX one (16g saved)
- The carbon saddle now has 'padding'; two short rubberised strips to prevent sliding forward :blink:
- Rotor crankset's fitted, although it doesn't spin as freely as I'd like
- Stem dropped to the point we're going to shorten the steerer to
- Largest chainring we'll use for hillclimbs fitted (we've 40/42/44/46 tooth options) rather than the 50/34 the crankset came with

Just waiting for new jockey wheels to arrive and the rear derailleur plus chain and gear cables will be fitted. Then final adjustments to cables/chain/etc. with the Dura-Ace pedals going on once I find where I put them for safe-keeping :whistle: . Hoods will come off and tape/heatshrink plastic to go on. Photo to date:

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It may need a shorter and lighter stem once done. The Zipp one fitted's a bit portly at 130g. Also the budget's gone over the £500 limit a tad as well with about £560 spent to date. The only other cost would be a lighter stem though so almost done buying parts.
 
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JhnBssll

Guru
Location
Suffolk
I made my own headset press this morning, cost me £170 less than the Park Tools press! £3 for the M8 threaded bar, the 17mm nuts and M8 washers I already had, and I used a couple of large sockets from my tool box.

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Worked perfectly!

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I've got one just like that :laugh:

I had a fettle yesterday evening. The wheels arrived for the Giant so I swapped the tyres over, fitted the discs and put the new cassette on. I then refitted the rear wheel, mechs and chain.

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The new forks are due to arrive tomorrow so I should finish the build off in the next day or so 😄

Before I put the tools away I decided to have a go at another 'favour' job I'd taken on a few days previously...

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Little outboard from a friends dinghy - he moors his yacht a mile out in the river, so this thing cutting out causes him a lot of rowing, especially if he's against the tide :laugh: I hadn't been inside an outboard before so thought it might be an interesting learning experience :laugh:

Anyway, I whipped the plug out and binned it, it was nice and corroded on the outside but didn't look too bad at the tip. Next I disconnected all the hoses and linkages from the carburettor and whipped that out too. My friends guess was the fuel had gummed up the jet so I figured I'd check that first.

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Turned out there was some debris in the float chamber and a scaley build up on some of the surfaces so I gave it a good clean with carb cleaner. I was able to clean the jet with a very fine piece of copper wire I had in the garage and then set about reassembling it all.

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Since it was late by this time I decided not to try and run it :laugh: Instead my friend came over at lunchtime today to test it so we filled the big bucket with water and dropped the prop in. It chugged into life on the second pull of the chord and within a few minutes was ticking over nicely with the choke off. It was still stalling when falling back to idle, so I tweaked the idle screw slightly and it was good as gold. Throttle response was good, didn't seem to bog down and it was no longer cutting out 😄 Great success. My friend is pleased as it's saved him a £150 rebuild cost and a 6 week wait, not to mention lots of rowing :laugh: Hoping to get out again for more fettling later this evening :okay:
 

DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
are you going to get a new bike once u've sold it

It was to be used as a 'snow' bike with studded tyres. Instead I used my Raleigh Pioneer which also has them and this was never used. Local shopping trips were on the Dawes Kingpin I have or my Raleigh and I can't ride off-road any more due to past injuries.

Having recently bought a new track bike and re-built a 'spare' track bike we're also building a hillclimb bike for my son so have run out of space. When that's done there's the Dawes Kingpin to upgrade. Something needs to go!
 

rogerzilla

Legendary Member
I fitted the brakes to the Bob Griffin, which I've turned into a flat bar singlespeed. Centre-pulls with smooth-post pads are not easy to set up. Did 36 miles on it this morning. It's brutally efficient and totally silent when pedalling. The White Industries freewheel can wake the dead, though...but thar's half the point of buying one.
 

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DCLane

Found in the Yorkshire hills ...
Son's tub blew whilst we were out having a practice on the TT bikes this morning, so swapped wheels with mine and sent him on his way. A 30mph blow-out was 'interesting' apparently :eek:

Old tub removed, replacement to go on later.

We also dropped the bars on his TT bike: I was convinced they were too high so dropped them 1". We may lower them further by swapping the stem over or taking spacers off the larger part of Argon's 3D headset but the tool's got to arrive to do that. Once happy the steerer can be cut.

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